“Boarding group 8 may now board,” I heard the airline official call us through the faintly sounding speakers. “Finally,” I thought to myself. I was tired.  After a sixteen hour flight from Doha, Qatar to Dallas, I had to wait another four hours before getting on this flight.  When I first landed in the US, I couldn’t help but notice how large the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport was. It took our airplane about 10 minutes find the gate where we were supposed to depart from. Compared to my country’s singular airport: Entebbe,  Dallas Fort Worth was a goliath.  Even the size of the air port didn’t take away from the fact that  I was hungry. I planned to eat  food at the Airport. Just after getting off the escalators, I saw the bright colorful Burger King logo  from afar. I knew then that  this was my que to get something to eat. On the dashboard, the burger price was nine dollars. Yet, when I made the order at the counter, I was asked to pay about twelve dollars and a couple of  cents.  I didn’t understand why.  Wouldn’t it have been a lot easier if the displayed price was the actual  price of the item? I learnt that the displayed price did not include taxes. In my short lived international travel, all other places I had been to were more straightforward, the price displayed is what you had to pay.

When I entered the aircraft, I had to walk sideways because aisle was small. Probably also because I am a little bit overweight, so the aisle felt narrow.  I staggered to the back since my laptop bag kept on being trapped between the aisle seats of each row. My seat was in the second last row from the tail of the airplane. It is the furthest I have sat in an airplane. I took my seat, placed my laptop bag under the seat in front of me, and took a deep breath. Later, my neighbor came in. He smiled at me in a vague insincere manner; just moving his cheeks and lips without opening his mouth.  The smile was artificial enough to make me feel noticed, but also superficial for me to see that it wasn’t genuine. He was a well rounded muscular gentleman: everything I am not. He wore a baseball cap and white shirt. His hairy arms were noticeable even from three meters away. I said “Hello.” “Hi,” he responded, before he pulled his cap to cover his eyes and leaned his head back on the seat. That is the only time I saw his face. I arrived safely in Manhattan, where we (alongside other scholars) were going to spend the next three weeks.

In Kansas, we had different classes, sessions and group activities.  I attended the Rodeo in Riley County.  A rodeo, as I witnessed it, was a midwestern American sport where “cowboys” and “cowgirls” did different competitive exercises with animals. This  ranged from wrestling bulls to riding them involuntarily. Some scholars did not attend the rodeo because of the perceived mistreatment of animals in this sport.   Regardless, it was a full house with over 2000 people in the stands. While this animated event went on, there were breaks between the different routines.  In one of the  breaks, a comedian was invited to speak.  The  comedian   had a horse beside him as a prop. This was unusual especially because he wasn’t on top of the horse. Everyone wondered what he was going to do. He began to speak.  While leaning towards the tail and the back of the horse, he said “uuhmmm…this smells like Obamacare!” The crowd erupted into laughter. I found this rather surprising. I had read about Obamacare and how as a policy, it sought to subsidize the heavily commercialized healthcare in America. It could be that this is what freedom of expression meant, or perhaps, it was just a banter for  a good laugh in this part of America.